by Roy Jackson
It is curious that Nietzsche places greater emphasis on this doctrine in his notes and letters than any other aspect of his philosophy, and yet he never elaborated upon it in his published works. When we consider what was important for Nietzsche, what stands out is his belief throughout his life that existence should be justified; that is, the true philosopher does not go through life happily in an unquestioning manner, but seeks to give meaning and value to his existence. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche thought life could be justified, could have value, through art – or rather ‘Art’ in the ancient Greek sense. The Greeks lived a life of ‘Dionysian joy’. However, Nietzsche, later in life, felt that Art was not the salvation he had originally hoped and it was in August 1881, while walking in the Swiss mountains, that the thought came to him of the eternal recurrence. With this thought came an experience, a psychological impact that caused him to affirm life and to love it.
This feeling of joy, Nietzsche thought, is the formula for the greatness of the human being, and he is making an essential connection with the doctrine of the Superman. The Superman is one who, like Zarathustra, is able to embrace the doctrine of eternal recurrence and find redemption within it. If, before and after every action, you were to ask, ‘Do you want this action to occur again and again for all eternity?’ and you could answer in the joyful affirmative, you are exercising the will to power in a positive manner. The weak look to the next life for hope, whereas the strong look to this life.
It is important always to keep in mind what was happening at the time Nietzsche was writing. The rise of nihilism was a serious concern for Nietzsche and he was only too aware of the political implications of such beliefs – or lack of beliefs – for the future of Europe.
Spotlight
The concept of the eternal recurrence – or eternal return – has been used in a number of films, including the 1993 Hollywood romcom Groundhog Day, which tells the story of Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) who wakes up every morning at the same time (2 February, Groundhog Day) in the same place and experiences the same events.
Zarathustra and the Superman
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the prophet descends from his mountain to teach the Superman. The German word Nietzsche used is Übermensch, which literally translates as ‘Overman’. However, ‘Superman’ – despite the comic-book connotations and the possibility of misleading people into believing in some superhuman figure – remains a common translation. Nietzsche did not invent the term, and would have come across it in the works of the great German poet Goethe (1749–1832) and, in his study as a classical philologist, in the works of the Greek writer Lucian of Samosata (c.120–80 CE). However, it was Nietzsche who gave the term a new meaning.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche uses the term Übermensch to refer to gods and heroes of, especially, the ancient Greeks. For him, these were symbols of nonconformity, of those who did not fit within the norm but were prepared to challenge contemporary values and beliefs. This is a theme – the stress on individualism and the realization of one’s self – evident in Nietzsche’s earlier works, and a careful reading of these shows the development of his thought previous to the first appearance of the Nietzschean Superman in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
In the second of his Untimely Meditations, for example, Nietzsche talks about the goal of humanity, and that this must rest with its highest specimens. That is, Nietzsche is aware of what humankind is capable of achieving and raises the question of why we usually fail to live up to our potential. There are examples in history of great people, of philosophers, artists and saints, but even they remain ‘human, all too human’.
Nietzsche often sings the praises of Napoleon, not because of his military prowess but because he represents what Nietzsche calls the ‘good European’; the person who is not obsessed with the kind of nationalism that was plaguing Germany at the time of Nietzsche. In this arena, Nietzsche also places such figures as Goethe, Beethoven, Caesar and Michelangelo. However, none of these is a ‘Superman’, but each represents certain features that make up the will to power, such as self-mastery, individualism and charisma. Nonetheless, in the end all of these figures still remain ‘human, all too human’, for Nietzsche is quick to recognize their faults. There has never been a Superman, although Nietzsche sees the ideal as a Caesar with the soul of Christ. Even Zarathustra is only the herald of the Superman, not one himself.
Importantly, the link with the eternal recurrence is that the Superman is one who will embrace the doctrine: who can look to his own life and wish to relive it again and again for infinity. It is an unconditional acceptance of existence, a saying ‘Yes’ to everything. For Nietzsche, the Superman is an affirmation of life – the opposite of Schopenhauer’s denial of it and a desire for the self to be extinguished.
However, it is one thing to talk of a Superman, of the highest specimen, of greatness, but what does this greatness really mean in terms of our values? Much of Nietzsche’s writings have been taken out of context, and none more so than his references to the Superman and a super race. By the Superman, Nietzsche did not mean some blond giant dominating and persecuting lesser mortals. Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth helped to promote the idea that he did, and she also assured Hitler that it was he whom her brother had in mind when he talked of the Superman. Nietzsche talked of a new direction, but a new direction towards what? What are the political, moral and practical applications?
An understanding of the will to power and eternal recurrence gives us some indication, but to understand what Nietzsche meant by the Superman we need to consider his later work.
After Zarathustra
It is evident from his notes and letters that the ideas in Thus Spoke Zarathustra had preoccupied Nietzsche for some time. After its completion, Nietzsche felt exuberant. Although rarely mentioned by name in his works, the hypothesis of the will to power was always there in the background and the theme was developed to some extent in the works to come, which proved to be his finest. These were Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) and Twilight of the Idols (written in 1888 and published in 1889). It was a prolific and original period in Nietzsche’s life during which he gradually abandoned the aphoristic style in favour of a more coherent form.
Spotlight
It was during this period that Nietzsche was as ‘settled’ as he would ever be. He had established a routine of spending the summers in Sils-Maria and the winters in Nice. (Nice had had been an Italian city (Nizza) before 1860, when it was ceded to Napoleon III’s French Empire, though Nietzsche always refused to recognize it as French.) He had got over the Rée–Salomé affair and he now reduced his contact with the outside world to a bare minimum, concentrating on his writing. His health continued to worsen, however, to the extent that he was now nearly blind. The fact that he continued to write so prolifically is a credit to his own will to power.
Much of Zarathustra was written in Nice, where Nietzsche’s health always took a turn for the better, but the summer of 1884 in Sils-Maria proved less pleasant. He had trouble sleeping and said that, when he closed his eyes, he would see an array of flowers. He feared that he was going mad, but this may well have been due to his consumption of drugs, including hashish, and alcohol, which included stout and pale ale.
Nietzsche insisted that everything he wrote after Thus Spoke Zarathustra was a commentary upon it. However, the Superman is not mentioned again, the eternal recurrence only occasionally crops up, and the will to power remains, mostly, below the surface. Perhaps it is an exaggeration to say that his post-Zarathustra works are merely ‘commentaries’: they are works of philosophy in their own right and introduce many new ideas and concepts. At the same time, they do help to explain and elaborate upon the concepts previously introduced, especially his next book, Beyond Good and Evil.
Nihilism
One of the stated aims of Beyond Good and Evil was to liberate Nietzsche’s Europe from what he considered to be a decline into decadence, nationalism and stupidity. His concerns
for the future of Europe turned out to be prophetic, of course, and this helps us understand why Nietzsche himself was often taken to be something of a prophet after his death – an image his sister Elisabeth was more than happy to promote. The title Beyond Good and Evil can be misleading, because it suggests that we must cast aside all values, that there are no values and, consequently, the coming of the Superman heralds a breed that can do as it pleases, without any regard or concern for others. This, however, is not what Nietzsche meant to express.
In a desire to give it some kind of label, some critics have described Nietzsche’s philosophy as nihilism, from the Latin nihil, meaning ‘nothing’ and suggesting negativity and emptiness, a rejection of all values and a belief in nothing. Yet Nietzsche could be a very positive, joyful and affirmative philosopher.
We can categorize two types of nihilism, neither of which Nietzsche falls into but was nonetheless influenced by: Oriental nihilism and European nihilism.
ORIENTAL NIHILISM
Schopenhauer was heavily influenced by what he understood of Buddhist teachings and, when he talks of extinguishing the self and that the world we live in has no ultimate reality, it is this form of nihilism that he is considering. It possesses the following characteristics:
• Because the world we live in is not real, our attachment to it is an illusion.
• Life is without sense or point, merely an endless cycle of birth and rebirth.
• To find salvation, we must escape from this world and extinguish the concept of the self.
EUROPEAN NIHILISM
The Russian author Ivan Turgenev (1818–83) was the first to introduce the nihilist to the novel. In his greatest novel, Fathers and Sons (1862), the hero is Bazarov, an idealistic young radical dedicated to universal freedom but destined for tragedy. This novel reflected a nihilism that existed in the latter decades of nineteenth-century Europe:
• Nihilists consisted mostly of the younger generation, who rejected the beliefs and values of the older generation.
• Rejecting the beliefs of their elders about religion, tradition and culture, these nihilists claimed to believe in ‘nothing’.
• However, the nihilists replaced traditional beliefs with a belief in science. Instead of seeking salvation in the next life, the nihilists looked to a better understanding of this world as the future hope.
THE ‘NIHILISM’ OF NIETZSCHE
In both Oriental nihilism and European nihilism, there still exists a belief in salvation – that there can be a form of order and values. Nietzsche, however, goes much further than this:
• All belief systems, whether in the field of science, religion, art or morality, are fictions. They are merely instances of the will to power.
• This world is the only world, even if it is valueless. There is no ‘unity’, no ‘truth’.
• This fact should not lead to pessimism, to a ‘will to nothingness’. Rather, we should adopt a Dionysian ‘yes’ to life.
To say that the world is ‘valueless’ is not to say that it has little worth. Rather, it does not make sense to say one thing has more ‘value’ than another, because there is no such thing as a scale of values. Nothing has value; there are no facts, no ‘better’ or ‘worse’. This was a rejection of the belief of so many philosophies and religions that there is an objective world. These religions and other metaphysical propositions often endorse a correspondence theory of truth (see also Chapter 8). This theory holds that when we use terms like ‘God’, or ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘justice’, we are making reference to an actual ‘God’, an actual ‘justice’ and so on; that is, these terms correspond to a reality. For Nietzsche, there is no reality for these terms to correspond to. Nietzsche’s views on truth and perspectivism are considered in the next chapter.
Amor fati: love your fate!
For European nihilism, especially of the Russian variety, a rejection of traditional values had political implications with the call for a revolution. Nietzsche’s main concern, however, was with the psychological impact of the acceptance that there are no truths. He saw that it could well lead to pessimism and despair or the attitude that ‘anything goes’. Nietzsche viewed nihilism as a positive affirmation of life and as freedom from the burden of hope in an afterlife, in salvation. You should love your fate without the need of fictions and false securities to comfort you.
Nietzsche’s ‘nihilism’ finds its culmination in the doctrine of the eternal recurrence. Man must not only accept his fate and, indeed, love his fate, but also embrace this purposeless existence as recurring again and again for infinity. The person who can do this deserves the title ‘Superman’:
• The Superman rejects the belief that there are objective values or values of any kind.
• The Superman does not, as a result, become a pessimist or suffer from despair; rather, he embraces life and loves his fate (amor fati).
• Even when faced with the prospect that he will have to live exactly the same life again, the Superman’s amor fati is not dented. Even existence in its most fearful form is a joyful one.
Nietzsche has presented us with a picture of humanity and its relation to the world it lives in. This picture is of a people constantly trying to impose an order, structure and meaning upon a universe that has no order, structure or meaning. Rather, the universe is in a state of constant change, plurality, chaos and becoming. There is no benign God, there are no objective moral values, there is no, in Kantian terms, ‘noumena’.
Nietzsche asks why, for probably the whole history of humanity, we have clung on to beliefs in God or objective values. Obviously, we have a need for religious and metaphysical comfort but, as Nietzsche’s world approached the twentieth century, there was a growing feeling that such beliefs no longer had intellectual credibility. A belief in God was filled with too many paradoxes and contradictions, too many claims to truth that conflicted with the evidence.
As more and more people began to question religious claims, they looked for other ‘truths’ through science, through art, or through Kantian metaphysics. Yet, for Nietzsche, this was just replacing one fiction with another. Having said that, during his earlier writings, notably in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche attributed value to art. Nietzsche recognized that art can help give meaning to life and help us access a different way of understanding the world. Although Nietzsche recognized the psychological benefits of art, it was another thing to believe that art is any ‘truer’ than any other belief. This is not something that Nietzsche would subscribe to.
Nietzsche always took an interest in science, too. He recognized that science provided humanity with many benefits. Whereas religion was concerned with the next life, with salvation and the eternal soul, science at least provided knowledge of the world that might endure the scepticism of generations. Here, however, we can see some contradictions in Nietzsche’s own thinking for, at times, his emphasis upon science seems to go against his own view that there are no ‘facts’. But, although impressed with the methods of scientific investigation, later in life he adopted the view that science, too, rested on errors. Science, like art, is creation and invention rather than discovery, for there is nothing there to discover. Undoubtedly science is useful, but this is different from believing that science is true. This realization, that all beliefs are simply a matter of perspective, is the first step that must be made if man is to overcome man.
Key ideas
Amor fati: Latin for ‘love your fate’, a term Nietzsche used to express an affirmation of life
Correspondence theory of truth: the view that, when we talk of things being ‘true’, we are referring to things that actually exist in reality: when you point to an object and say ‘it is there’, then it really is there
Eternal recurrence: the teaching that this exact life has occurred an infinite number of times in the past, and will continue to do so an infinite number of times in the future
Nihilism: literally a ‘belief in nothing’; there are varying levels of nih
ilism: at its less extreme it is a rejection of contemporary values and traditions, but does present the possibility of alternatives
Orientalist: a term used to describe Western writings, paintings and other cultural artefacts that present a romantic and distorted picture of the East, or the ‘Orient’
Übermensch: a German word that literally translates as ‘Overman’ but that is usually translated as ‘Superman’ when referring to those prepared to question accepted beliefs, assert their individuality and embrace the idea of eternal recurrence
Things to remember
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra is Nietzsche’s most popular work. It develops the themes of the will to power, the Superman and the eternal recurrence.
• Nietzsche’s character of Zarathustra is to some extent autobiographical and can be seen as Nietzsche heralding the coming of the Superman.
• The principal idea of the eternal recurrence is that whatever in fact happens has happened an infinite number of times in exactly the same detail and will do so for eternity. Nietzsche did not set out to prove the doctrine of the eternal recurrence; rather to present it as a thought experiment and to challenge us to consider what our reaction would be if the doctrine were true.
• The Superman is someone prepared to embrace the doctrine of eternal recurrence and to look forward to the possibility of living his or her life over and over for ever.
• Although the term ‘Superman’ is the usual translation of the German Übermensch, this does not imply a superhuman being. Rather, it requires humanity to adopt a certain psychological stance towards the world and to consider the possibility of adopting new values.